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Resistance through re-narration: Fanon on de-constructing racialized subjectivities

2011; Routledge; Volume: 9; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14725843.2011.614410

1472-5851

Cynthia R. Nielsen,

African cultural and philosophical studies

Abstract Frantz Fanon offers a lucid account of his entrance into the white world where the weightiness of the 'white gaze' nearly crushed him. In chapter five of Black Skins, White Masks, he develops his historico-racial and epidermal racial schemata as correctives to Merleau-Ponty's overly inclusive corporeal schema. Experientially aware of the reality of socially constructed (racialized) subjectivities, Fanon uses his schemata to explain the creation, maintenance, and eventual rigidification of white-scripted 'blackness'. Through a re-telling of his own experiences of racism, Fanon is able to show how a black person in a racialized context eventually internalizes the 'white gaze'. In this essay I bring Fanon's insights into conversation with Foucault's discussion of panoptic surveillance. Although the internalization of the white narrative creates a situation in which external constraints are no longer needed, Fanon highlights both the historical contingency of 'blackness' and the ways in which the oppressed can re-narrate their subjectivities. Lastly, I discuss Fanon's historically attuned 'new humanism', once again engaging Fanon and Foucault as dialogue partners. Keywords: historico-racial and epidermal racial schemataFanon and Foucaultpanoptic surveillance and racialized subjectivitieswhite gazedecolonizationFanon's new humanism Notes 1. Ahluwalia (Citation2010) stresses the significance of understanding not only Fanon, but Sartre, Camus, Derrida, Cixous, and a host of other 'border intellectuals' in relation to their Algerian ties, both literal and metaphorical. 2. Fanon published his letter of resignation in his work, Toward the African Revolution. Here are a few relevant excerpts: 'Madness is one of the means man has of losing his freedom. And I can say, on the basis of what I have been able to observe from this point of vantage, that the degree of alienation of the inhabitants of this country appears to me frightening. If psychiatry is the medical technique that aims to enable man no longer to be a stranger to his environment, I owe it to myself to affirm that the Arab, permanently an alien in his own country, lives in a state of absolute depersonalization. What is the status of Algeria? A systematized de-humanization. It was an absurd gamble to undertake at whatever cost, to bring into existence a certain number of values, when the lawlessness, the inequality, the multi-daily murder of man were raised to the status of legislative principles. The social structure existing in Algeria was hostile to any attempt to put the individual back where he belonged' (Fanon Citation1969, p. 53). 3. As Robert Young points out, although Fanon 'took no part in the FLN military campaigns, apart from organizing a new supply route through Mali in 1960', he did 'play a significant part in the international political campaigns which the FLN, more than the French themselves, realized was of almost equal significance to the physical struggle' (Young Citation2001, p. 277). 4. For a quite different reading of Fanon's identification with Algeria, see Memmi, 'La vie impossible de Frantz Fanon'. Memmi interprets Fanon's association and attempt to become Algerian as part of his failure to accept and to return to his West Indian roots. 'Son vrai problème en vérité n'était ni comment être français ni comment être algérien, mais comment être antillais' (Memmi Citation1971, p. 272). ('In reality, his true problem was neither how to be French, nor how to be Algerian, but rather how to be Antillean'. My translation). 5. Memmi likewise comments on Fanon's homelessness. However, once again, Memmi's reading focuses on what he understands as Fanon's psychological motivations for his actions. According to Memmi, once Fanon decided that he could neither be French nor West Indian, he sought solidarity with the Algerian struggle for liberation. However, when the Algerian movement became too nationalistic for Fanon, he had nothing left but to postulate the vision of a new, universal humanity. As Memmi puts it, '[p]our achever cette fuite en avant, pour résoudre son drame, que lui restait-il, sinon de proposer un homme totalement inédit, dans un monde totalement reconstruit?' (1971, p. 248). ('In order to complete this leap forward to resolve his personal drama, what was left for him, if not to propose an utterly new human being, in an utterly reconstructed world?' My translation). 6. JanMohamed (Citation1992, p. 97) lists W.E.B. du Bois, Richard Wright, and Zora Neale Hurston as examples of specular intellectuals and playwright Wole Soyinka and novelists Salman Rushdie and Anton Shammas as examples of syncretic intellectuals. 7. See also Gibson (Citation2003). Gibson argues, on the one hand, 'Fanon contested the European liberal humanist view of the subject'; on the other hand, unlike many postmodern thinkers, Fanon 'did not abandon the concept of the subject nor that of subjugated knowledge' (2003, p. 7). 8. The French text reads, 'tiens un nègre', which can also be translated, 'Look! A Nigger'. Perhaps various English translations have presented a kinder, gentler version, thus concealing the 'sting' produced by the child's repeated utterance. I have focused my analysis on Fanon's critical engagement with Merleau-Ponty; however, Fanon is also throughout this chapter engaged in critical dialogue with Jean-Paul Sartre. For a detailed explanation of the ways in which Fanon takes up Sartrean concepts and schematics for his own purposes, see Sekyi-Otu (Citation1996), especially pp. 65–72. 9. See also van Leewan (Citation2007), 296 ff. Van Leewan discusses the 'gaze' from the perspective of the racist in order to give an account of the motivational structure of racism. In addition, van Leeuwen's essay offers several practical anti-racism strategies (see especially 2007, pp. 303–5). 10. On Merleau-Ponty's account, 'there is no inner man, man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself' (1962, p. xii). 11. The body, rather than an object for an 'I think' to grasp, 'is a grouping of lived-through meanings which moves toward its equilibrium' (Merleau-Ponty Citation1962, p. 177). 12. See also Merleau-Ponty for a discussion of how our body inhabits the world and how our bodily experience of movement 'provides us with a way of access to the world and the object' (1962, p. 162). 13. For a discussion of sensations belonging to certain fields, see Merleau-Ponty (1962, p. 351). 14. Fanon describes with ironic overtones Merleau-Ponty's account as follows, '[a] slow construction of my self as a body in a spatial and temporal world seems to be the schema. It is not imposed on me; it is rather a definitive structuring of my self and the world' (2008, p. 91). 15. In Fanon's words, '[d]isoriented, incapable of confronting the Other, the white man, who had no scruples about imprisoning me, I transported myself on that particular day far, very far, from myself, and gave myself up as an object' (2008, p. 92). See also Memmi (Citation1971). As Memmi explains, an oppressive racialized relation, such as the slave/master or colonized/colonizer relationship, 'réclame que le Noir renonce a lui-même comme Noir. […] l'un des résultants de cet effort contre nature est, à côté de la guerre menée par le Blanc contre le Noir, une guerre livrée par le Noir a lui-même, conséquence de la première, et peut-être plus destructrice encore, car elle est entreprise de l'intérieur et sans répit' (1971, pp. 252–253). ('[…] demands that the Black renounce himself as Black. […] one of the results of this straining against nature is – next to the war waged by the White against the Black – a war, which is a consequence of the first, fought by the Black against himself. This second war is perhaps more destructive than the first, because it is undertaken internally and continues relentlessly'. My translation). 16. See also van Leewan's discussion of bell hooks's phrase, 'the white control of the black gaze' (Citation2008, p. 58). 17. Of course, the asymmetry in view here applies to black women as well but with different dynamics and potentially different (bodily) consequences. 18. As to my personal position on race, I situate myself within the racial constructionism camp, which denies any form of biobehavioural racial essentialism yet considers race an important social reality worthy of our discourse, study and continued reflection. For a helpful discussion of three dominant positions on race in contemporary race theory, see Mallon (Citation2006). 19. On the movement and interpretation of Fanon's schemata, I concur with Weate's analysis, which characterizes the racial epidermal schema as 'a later stage in psychosomatic disintegration and alienation' (2001, p. 174). Weate goes on to discuss the movement to the epidermal schema as Fanon's attempt to trace a 'genealogy of racial essentialism' (2001, p. 173). 20. By the phrase 'white gaze' I have in mind the white mythological narrative as manifest in the cultural consciousness and systematically expressed (both consciously and unconsciously) in the cultural institutions, practices, and ethos of a given society. 21. Although Foucault has been criticized for 'gender blindness', and, as Pal Ahluwalia puts it paraphrasing a criticism by postcolonial scholar, Robert Young, for a seemingly 'calculated absence of the colonial world in his work', Ahluwalia argues that Foucault's time in Tunisia and the distance it provided for critical reflection on French culture, as well as his engagement with the Iranian revolution, affected Foucault's project profoundly, compelling him to speak and write in a more explicitly ethico-politic key. See, for example, Ahluwalia (Citation2010), especially pp. 145–153. 22. See, for example, Fanon's critique of Mannoni in chapter four of Black Skin, White Masks. Contra Mannoni's claims, Fanon draws attention to the fact that the very 'structure of South Africa is a racist structure' (2008, p. 68). David Scott describes Fanon's account of the all-pervasiveness of colonial power in the latter's book, The Wretched of the Earth, as 'constitut[ing] a total regime of systemic and systematic brutality, occupying simultaneously physical and psychological space, inscribing its effects in the very organization of desire of the colonized. It is a form of power, that is, moreover, resistant to reason, and therefore to negotiation' (Scott Citation1999, p. 203). 23. See also Nigel Gibson (Citation2003), chapters 1 and 2. As Gibson observes, '[c]olonial thought, from travel literature of the nineteenth century to administrative and psychological services of the twentieth, was built on Enlightenment categories embellished by imperial scientism' (2003, p. 6). 24. Robert Bernasconi has devoted several essays to the study of Hegel and his Eurocentrism. See, for example, Bernasconi (Citation1998, Citation2000). 25. See Weate (Citation2001), p. 176. See also, Fanon (Citation2008), p. 92. 26. Fanon goes on to say, '[t]he density of History determines none of my acts. I am my own foundation. And it is by going beyond the historical and instrumental given that I initiate my cycle of freedom' (2008, p. 205). 27. See, for example, Foucault (Citation1982). In this late essay, Foucault provides a lucid discussion of his understanding of power relations and how they presuppose free subjects. 28. For a detailed analysis of Césaire and the Negritude movement, as well as Césaire's influence on Fanon, see Rabaka (Citation2009), chapters four and five. See also Bouvier (Citation2008, Citation2010). 29. See, for example, Bouvier (Citation2010), especially 146–150. Among other things, Bouvier discusses Fanon's complex understanding of the role of violence in the process of decolonization, noting how Fanon draws upon Césairean-inspired images and metaphors as he develops his own distinctive 'radical' project. 30. See Rabaka's discussion on Fanon's Pan-Africanism (2009, pp. 167–168). 31. See, for example, Sartre (Citation1948), especially p. xli. In addition to his claim that Negritude is a 'weak stage' [le temps faible], an antithesis in the dialectic of which 'white supremacy is the thesis' [la suprématie du blanc est la thèse] and that which 'exists for its own destruction' [est pour se détruire], Sartre also claims that Negritude is intended as a preparatory stage for the ultimate synthesis, namely the 'realization of a human in a society without races' [réalisation de l'humain dans une société sans races] (1948, p. xli; my translation). As Rabaka points out, particularly with respect to the idea of a postracial society, Sartrean Negritude is at odds with both Césaire and Senghor's articulations of Negritude. See, for example, Rabaka (Citation2009), chapter four, 'Aimé Césaire and Leopold Senghor: Revolutionary Negritude and Radical New Negroes', especially pp. 112–119. Rabaka also underscores how Sartre and the (white) Marxists generally speaking have failed to see the connection between capitalism and colonialism and capitalism and racism, whereas Césaire and other black radicals, having lived an exploited existence, refuse to make colonialism and racism secondary issues (2009, see especially pp. 116–119). 32. Regarding Sartre's influence on Fanon, Memmi writes: '[Sartre] déclarant que la Négritude n'est jamais que le temps faible dans la dialectique de libération du Noir. Fanon a fortement été impressionné par Sartre, jusqu'a la fin de sa vie, […] Et lorsque, dan Orphée noir, Sartre a tente de réduire la Négritude a sa négativité […] CitationFanon en a été bouleverse; il a eu le sentiment d'avoir été expulse de lui-même. Il a ce sentiment, il est bouleverse, mais il accepte les conclusions de Sartre' (1971, p. 255). ('[Sartre] declared that Negritude was nothing but the weak stage in the dialectic of Black liberation. To the very end of his life, Fanon was greatly impressed by Sartre, […] And when, in 'Black Orpheus', Sartre attempted to reduce Negritude to its negativity […] Fanon was shattered; he has the experience of having been expelled from himself. He has this experience; he is shattered, yet he accepts Sartre's conclusions.' My translation). 33. Ironically, aspects of Memmi's critique of Sartre, on my reading of Fanon, are harmonious with Fanon's own position on Sartre. For example, Memmi states that even if one concedes Sartre's point about Negritude as a negative phase in the dialectic, one must still understand the historical and embodied significance of this phase. See, for example (1971, p. 256). Bouvier (Citation2010, especially p. 90) likewise captures some of the ambivalence of Fanon's relation to Sartre's thought. 34. Fanon makes similar remarks earlier in the chapter. For example, before quoting a long paragraph from 'Orphée Noir', where Sartre elucidated his view of Negritude as a weak stage that must self-destruct, Fanon writes, 'I wanted to be typically black – that was out of the question. I wanted to be white – that was a joke. And when I tried to claim my negritude intellectually as a concept, they snatched it away from me. […] We had appealed to a friend of the coloured peoples, and this friend had found nothing better to do than demonstrate the relativity of their action' (2008, pp. 111, 112). For a more detailed discussion of the tense yet fecund relationship between Fanon and Sartre, as well as their theoretical and socio-political similarities and differences regarding decolonization, see Jules-Rosette (Citation2007), especially pp. 276–281. 35. See, for example, Spivak (Citation2006, p. 205). Cf. Memmi (Citation1971). Memmi's assessment of Fanon's relation to Negritude is cast in a mostly negative light and for the most part does not seem to allow for the possibility of Fanon understanding the movement along the strategic lines I have outlined in this chapter. According to Memmi, after first showing great excitement about Césaire's project, Fanon became an ardent critic of the movement (1971, see especially p. 254). 36. One aspect of this historically attuned humanism is manifest in an acute concern for and solidarity with the oppressed. Given the ways in which, under the banner of various 'humanisms', so many 'others' have been exploited, enslaved, and slaughtered, such concerns and sensitivities regarding the violent subjugation of one group by another are crucial for the redemption of humanism and its ongoing transformation into what I like to speak of as its 'symphonic' variation. That is, the new humanism I understand Fanon, improvising upon certain themes set forth by the Negritude writers, to develop is well-described as a symphonic humanism. In other words, analogous to a symphony, the contributions of each culture are seen as valuable because of their unique contributions to the beauty of the whole. In such an arrangement, a delicate balance is maintained between identity and difference as the various parts contribute toward common goals advancing human flourishing. However, intolerable dissonance sounds when one part (i.e., one culture) seeks to reduce all others to its own voice, a unison voice allowing no variation, improvisation, or syncopation. 37. See also Gibson (Citation2003). According to Gibson, '[f]or Fanon, active resistance was the first stage toward self-discovery, and he was well aware that in its early stages anticolonial action was an inversion of colonial Manicheanism and remained within its framework' (2003, p. 13). 38. See Foucault (Citation1990), especially pp. 17–49. 39. Even so, as I mentioned in passing earlier, Foucault's account of power relations, resistance tactics, and self-(re)narration presupposes at least some common, universal, trans-historical capacities, namely, rational and volitional capacities. See, for example, Foucault (Citation1982, Citation2001a). 40. As Fanon puts it, 'I was committed to myself and my fellow man, to fight with all my life and all my strength so that never again would people be enslaved on this earth' (2008, p. 202). 41. Contra claims by critics such as the notable Hannah Arendt that Fanon makes violence an end in itself, David Macey contends that '[t]he violence Fanon evokes is instrumental and he never dwells or gloats on its effects. […] The ALN was fighting a war and armies are not normally called upon to justify their violence' (2002, p. 475). For a similar argument against Arendt's conclusion, see also, Young, (2001, p. 281). Gibson (2003, especially pp. 103–126) likewise argues against the now common view of Fanon as an apostle of violence. See also, Jules-Rosette (2007, especially p. 277) for an analysis of Fanon and Sartre's position on the use of violence. For a defence of Fanon's theory of violence as 'self-defensive anticolonial violence', see Rabaka (Citation2009), pp. 194–199. 42. Ahluwalia develops this analogy between colonialism and disease, relating it to Fanon's medical training and his strategy for decolonization. See, for example, Ahluwalia (2010, pp. 63–66). 43. As Fanon's writings attest, the Algerian struggle for liberation was no doubt his concrete working paradigm. See also, Macey (Citation2002), especially the chapter entitled, 'The Wretched of the Earth'. Given the atrocities committed against the Algerian people, Macey draws attention to the appropriateness of Francis Jeason's book title, L'Algérie hors la loi (2002, p. 476). 44. For a critique of Fanon's reasoning for the alleged 'necessary' moment of violent confrontation on the part of the colonized and an argument in favour of non-violent forms of resistance in the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., see, Kebede (Citation2001), especially pp. 554–562. As Kebede observes, '[v]iolence has more to do with animality than humanity. The affirmation of the human by way of violence, which is the value of the colonizer, is what the colonized should strongly reject. Because colonizers are acting like beasts, there is no reason to aspire after their values. Instead, one must refuse to become beasts like them. […] Viewed from this necessity of cleansing the colonized soul of the accumulated anger, Negritude's appeal to the particular essence of the Black soul appears as a protection against colonial contaminations, as an attempt to preserve a measure of human countenance in a world disfigured by violence' (2001, p. 559). 45. Macey catalogues several vivid examples of the long history of violence carried out by the French on the Algerian people. See, for example, Macey (2002, p. 476). 46. Many scholars, including Memmi (Citation1971) have criticized Fanon's involvement with the Algerian revolution, claiming among other things that Fanon could not possibly identify authentically with Algerians since he was neither Algerian nor Muslim. Against a second critical claim that in the case of Algerian colonization Fanon's crucial notion of l'expérience vécue ('lived experience') fails to yield the analytical results desired 'because the Algerian does not experience colonialism on the basis of corporeal identity', Gibson argues that 'the importance of lived experience of the body-subject is not reducible […] to an essential identity' (2003, p. 10). Gibson then adds that in his later work, The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon also expresses corporeal difference 'spatially', analysing the effects on the colonized of forced living in terrorized spaces (2003, p. 10). 47. If we want to end on a consonant rather than dissonant note, we might point out that both Foucault and Fanon are critical of 'Man', that is, 'Man' as sovereign subject and originator of all meaning; however, when we harmonize Fanon's critique with Foucault's, the particular 'Man' in view just may turn out to be equivalent to white, European imperialist imposed qua norm. If so, then that particular subject construction is indeed worth putting to rest. 48. Another passage highlighting this same begrudging acknowledgment of positive aspects of Europe is the following: '[a]ll the elements for a solution to the major problems of humanity existed at one time or another in European thought. But the Europeans did not act on the mission that was designated them' (Fanon Citation2004, p. 237). Fanon, of course, continued to draw upon (not uncritically) the insights of Sartre, Hegel, Merleau-Ponty, and numerous other European thinkers. See also, Young (Citation2001), pp. 274–283, especially p. 276. Differentiating Fanon from other Anglophone and Francophone Marxists, Young writes: 'He [Fanon] always remained intellectually centred in Paris, and never resisted European thought as such, as much as he resisted European domination of the colonial world. A product of the western-educated elite, Fanon used the resources of western thought against itself' (2001, p. 276). 49. In the final chapter of his book, The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon expresses similar sentiments: 'we do not want to catch up with anyone. But what we want is to walk in the company of man, every man, night and day, for all times. It is not a question of stringing the caravan out where groups are spaced so far apart they cannot see the one in front, and men who no longer recognize each other, meet less and less and talk to each other less and less. […] if we want humanity to take one step forward, if we want to take it to another level than the one where Europe has placed it, then we must innovate, we must be pioneers' (2004, pp. 238, 239). 50. As Young emphasizes, we must avoid flattening Fanon's complex, multilayered view of Europe, in particular the European intellectual tradition. Referencing Fanon's closing remarks in The Wretched of the Earth issuing a call to leave Europe behind, Young reminds us that 'Fanon's own theoretical formulations remain European in orientation, above all towards Sartre', who 'was one of the very few European philosophers and intellectuals who made the issue of colonialism central to his work' (2001, p. 281).